Monday, May 23, 2011

Making the Sanguinary Guard Competitive

I have been doing a lot of blog perusing and thinking about how to make the Sanguinary Guard army more competitive.  It really is a gimmick army.  It relies on a lot of luck and hitting hard and fast to win.  Well balanced armies eat it for lunch.  After reading a bit of Kirby's stuff on Blood Angels, I am convinced that I can use SG as a focus for my army while still maintaining balance.  I came across a blog called Terminus Est that many of you may have heard of.  The primary writer, Black Blow Fly, has done a lot of work in creating a DoA army and blogging about it and based on that, I think I have created an interesting army concept.  Let me know what you think.

Dante
Libby- shield, sword

3 Sanguinary Priests-2x jump packs with hand flamers

5 Sanguinary Guard- 2x infernus, powerfist
5 Sanguinary Guard- 2x infernus, powerfist
5 Sanguinary Guard- 2x infernus, powerfist
10 man Assault Squad- 2x meltaguns, powerfist
5 man Scouts Squad- 4x sniper rifles, missile launcher

Landspeeder- multi-melta/heavy flamer
Landspeeder- multi-melta/heavy flamer

5 Devestators- 4x missile launchers
5 Devestators- 4x missile launchers

So how does this differ from other lists I have come up with? 

1) No Mephiston.  The guy is great and a beast, but he has a 250pt. price tag.  That is two whole units!  I got both the scout squad and the assault squad for his price tag.

2) More scoring units.  This list now has 5 (or 6 if I combat squad) scoring units.  This relieves the presure on my Sanguinary Guard.  When they were taking on the role of hammer units and scoring troops, there was a lot of burden to play conservatively with them.  In this setup, they still have to be played with reasonably, but can now also be a bit more aggressive knowing that other units can fill in the gap for them in holding objectives. 

3) More ranged attack.  Adding snipers and another missile launcher can give me a bit more ranged damage output.  Even having the addition of 12" melta in the assault squad is nice.  I missed that a whole lot.

4) Different playstyle.  This setup allows me, as mentioned above, the ability to be more agressive with my sanguinary guard.  I also have a fairly resilient home base presence with devestators and scouts backed by a sanguinary priest.  Together they can pump out quite a few S5 I5 attacks if needed.   Also, my libby becomes a utility HQ instead of a beat stick.  His job is to help protect the army.  Since I have an assault squad that could benefit, I may even give him unleash rage for more combat punch. 

The bottom line is that I can afford to be more in-your-face with an army like this.  I like that. 

So, does anyone have any thoughts on this new list?  Does it look more competitive than my most recent build found here

Also, I am looking for decent tactics on scouts.  I haven't really ever used them before and want to know how best to work with them.  For this particular army, I think their current setup is good, though I have thought about making one of my speeders a storm and giving them a close combat focus.  If I did that, I could use it's mobility to put them where I wanted them before making runs on vehicles with it's melta, but I digress.  I primarily want them for a home base objective camper and the sniper/camo/missile setup seems to be the best way to do this.  So, if you have any useful links, let me have them.

2 comments:

DarthSion57 said...

Love the list my only question is why you would bring another assault squad instead of a tactical squad to hold objs. with. Although BAs love their troop choice assault squad i still thin there is a place where a tactical squad might preform better. Such as holding Objs. And I am aware that that is the purpose of the scouts if there is more then two objs on the board I beleive that a tactical squad could hold it better. Again I love the list and I'm considering trying it out with a few tweaks in an upcomming local tourney. Hope it plays well for you and gives you a great many victories for the EMPRAH!

Dave said...

Thanks for reading my article! I appreciate your comments.

In this list, the main reason I don't include a tac squad is simply because of the cost. 5 scouts with sniper rifles, missile launcher, and camo cloaks run half the cost of a tac squad, can camp the same home obective, have slightly better ranged capacity, and are more mobile (move through cover, infiltrate, scout) than tacs.

In this particular list, I mainly like the scouts for their cheap price tag. BA DoA lists are hard up for points. Everything costs a mint and you need it all.

My final thought is that you only need one more objective than your opponent to win a game. This army excels at getting into your opponent's face and contesting their objectives so you can hold your own. That's all you need for the win sometimes.

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